Craiger wrote:
Defense is perhaps the hardest part of basketball to rate at an individual level and I'm not sure there is, as of yet anyways, a completely accurate way of rating or comparing players. But that doesn't mean we can't get a good idea of roughly how good or bad a player is.
So considering an 'average' defense rating (pts given up per 100 possessions with said player on the floor) is approx 105.
Rudy Gay drtg = 100
Thats significantly higher than average, and if we eliminate the players on Memphis with almost no statistical value (due to minutes - Haddadi, Wroten, Selby) would place him 5th on the team (tied with Mike Conley).
Now a players defense rating is absolutely impacted by their teammates (both positively and negatively), so lets take a simple look at the difference between Gay on and off the court (pts given up on/off court per 100 possessions)
Rudy Gay pts given up on/off per 100 possessions = -2.3
Which means that Memphis has so far been a better defensive team with Gay on the floor than off and at the very least its saying that he is not making his team worse.
So if we simply consider that Gay's defensive stats indicate that he is:
1) significantly better than average defender
2)while being a net positive defender on the floor compared to off
3)while playing on the 2nd best defensive team in the league
I couldn't possible picture anyway to consider him anything less than, conservatively, an average defender. Using a non-conservative perspective one could easily argue the stats say he is very good or near elite.